The Man Who Wasn't There - Plot

Plot

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a suburban barber, is married to Doris (Frances McDormand), a bookkeeper with a drinking problem. Doris' boss at Nirdlinger's, the local department store, is "Big Dave" Brewster (James Gandolfini), a loud, boisterous man, who constantly brags about his combat adventures in the Pacific Theatre during World War II where he claims to have served as a crack infantry trooper. Ed, by contrast, was rejected from the army due to his foot condition (flat feet). Ed suspects that Doris and Big Dave are having an affair. The barber shop where Ed works is owned by his brother-in-law Frank, a good-natured man of Italian ancestry who talks incessantly. A customer named Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito) tells Ed that he's a businessman looking for investors to put up $10,000 in a new technology called dry cleaning. Ed decides he wants to invest and schemes to get the money by anonymously blackmailing Big Dave for the money. Big Dave, unaware of Ed's scheme, confides to Ed that he's being blackmailed, asking for guidance. Ed advises him to pay. Dave delivers the money to a pre-arranged drop-off location.

Ed retrieves the money, delivers it to Tolliver and signs partnership paperwork. During the transaction, Tolliver makes an awkward homosexual advance, which is rebuffed. Big Dave calls Ed, asking him to meet at Nirdlinger's. Unbeknownst to Ed, Tolliver (whom Big Dave refers to as the "pansy") had also approached Big Dave, asking him for $10,000. Thinking it too much of a coincidence that he was asked for the same sum of money as the blackmail demand, Big Dave had tracked down Tolliver and beat a confession out of him. With Tolliver no longer the suspect, Big Dave realized Ed is the blackmailer. During their late-night meeting at Nirdlinger's, Big Dave accuses Ed of blackmail, then attacks and attempts to strangle him. Ed fatally stabs him in the neck with a knife that Dave kept in his office as a cigar cutter. Ed goes home, where his wife is still unconscious from her alcoholic binge at a wedding they had attended that day. Once evidence of Doris' affair with Big Dave is uncovered, and since she cannot account for her behavior due to her inebriated state at the time of the murder, she becomes the prime suspect. The local lawyers are deemed insufficient for such an important case, so Ed is persuaded to hire Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub), an expensive defense attorney from Sacramento, who arrives and takes up residence in the best and most expensive hotel in town. He proceeds to live lavishly on Ed's defense fund (obtained from a bank which accepted his brother-in-law's barber shop as collateral).

Meanwhile, Big Dave's widow, Ann (Katherine Borowitz), stops by Ed's house to convince him that she knows Doris did not murder Big Dave. She then tells him of a camping trip she had taken with Big Dave outside of Eugene, Oregon, the previous summer. She claims that an alien space ship landed near their campsite, and that Big Dave was taken aboard the ship. She insists that Big Dave's murder is part of a government conspiracy to cover up the alien abduction. While Ed, Doris, and Riedenschneider are brainstorming defense strategies, Ed confesses to the murder. Riedenschneider dismisses the confession, thinking Ed is simply fabricating an uncorroborated story to cover for his wife. Instead, Riedenschneider thinks that he's found a winning legal strategy when a private detective he'd hired digs up evidence that Big Dave was lying about his war heroism. The lawyer plans to present an alternate theory that the real killer was someone who was blackmailing Dave with this information.

On the first day of the trial, Doris and the judge are both late. When the judge arrives, he calls the counsel to the bench and dismisses the case. Doris has committed suicide, hanging herself in her jail cell. Riedenschneider leaves town disgusted. An autopsy later reveals that Doris was pregnant, despite not having had sex with Ed for years. All during the trial, Ed had been visiting Birdy Abundas (Scarlett Johansson), a friend's teenage daughter. Ed is enthralled by her piano-playing and wants to pay for further lessons to help her have a career as a pianist. Driving her back from an unsuccessful attempt to impress a piano teacher, Jacques Carcanogues (Adam Alexi-Malle), Birdy makes a pass at Ed and attempts to perform oral sex on him. Ed tries to stop her; the car swerves across the road to avoid hitting an oncoming car and crashes.

When Ed awakens in a hospital bed, two police officers (Christopher Kriesa and Brian Haley) tell him he's under arrest for murder. Ed assumes that Birdy died in the crash, but it turns out that Birdy survived with significant injuries and he is actually being arrested for Tolliver's murder. A young boy swimming in a lake discovered Tolliver, beaten to death by Brewster and submerged in his car. In his briefcase is the dry cleaning agreement signed by Ed; the police believe that Ed coerced Doris into embezzling the money from Nirdlinger's to use in the investment, and that Ed killed Tolliver. Ed is arraigned for the murder and mortgages his house to re-hire Riedenschneider. His opening statement to the jury is interrupted when Ed's brother-in-law Frank (Michael Badalucco) attacks Ed; a mistrial is declared. With no money and nothing left to mortgage, Ed is given the inadequate local lawyer. The new lawyer guides Ed to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court. The gambit doesn't work, and the judge sentences him to death.

Ed pencils his story sitting in his cell on death row, to sell to a pulp magazine that pays him by the word. While waiting on death row, he dreams of walking out to the prison courtyard and seeing a flying saucer, to which he reacts with a simple nod. He is walked to the electric chair and strapped in, where he sits thinking about meeting his wife and possibly having the words to explain his thoughts to her. He says he feels bad for the pain he caused others, but regrets none of his actions; he used to regret being a barber.